


Maps and Methodology (or, How To Draw a Map of Faerie)

by DreamerInSilico



Series: Original flashfic [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fae & Fairies, Flash Fic, honestly fae make far more sense than that shit, i wrote this in grad school while doing metabolomics research, in which the author quietly ruminates on analysis and visualization of complex datasets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 12:58:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13590540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerInSilico/pseuds/DreamerInSilico
Summary: Three mortals once sought the favor of the Queen of Faerie.





	Maps and Methodology (or, How To Draw a Map of Faerie)

**Author's Note:**

> Another tumblr port, written for Chuck Wendig's weekly flashfic challenge: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016/06/03/flash-fiction-challenge-must-contain-a-map/
> 
> This one was kind of an experiment in narration style; it's a definite departure from my usual.

Three mortals once sought the favor of the Queen of Faerie.   **  
**

Well.  It is doubtless that many more than three have done so, but three is traditional for a story, and these all tried within a handful of mortal years of one another - a blink of an eye to the fae.  

So, then, three mortals.

The first was young and beautiful and pure of heart, and so she hoped that the Queen might help her.  (Her memory for mythology was unfortunately somewhat lacking, or she might have realized she would have better luck with a unicorn.  Some of the fae do have a fascination for pure-hearted humans, but that fascination tends to end in the human being used as an ornament or a sacrifice rather than having their wishes granted.)  Naive though she was, however, she was not lacking in wit or luck, and the girl eventually managed to find her way to the Royal Court.  

The Queen smiled her cut-glass smile down at the girl in amusement and asked, “Well then, little mortal, what is it that you seek?”  

“Your Majesty,” the girl replied (for she did have manners, and those are important in dealings with the fae), “my father died five years past, and my mother has been desolate ever since.  I know that you are very powerful, and came hoping that perhaps you could give me a way to make her happy again.”  

“Mortal happiness is such a fleeting thing,” the Queen observed cooly.  “You are certain that this is what you want?”  

“Yes, your Majesty.”  

“Then because this is such a difficult, delicate task, you must do something for me in return.  My domain is vast, and has changed much since the last time it was properly mapped.  If you can bring me a satisfactory map of Faerie in a year and a day as measured in this throne room, then I will grant your wish.”  

The girl’s hopes fell, for it sounded a very large task indeed, but as payment it was less terrible than many of the sorts of prices the fae sometimes demanded.  And so she agreed, and set out to make a map of Faerie.  

The tale of her attempt is a long one, but suffice to say that she did not succeed.  Her year and a day was spent traveling about Faerie by any means she could, often getting lost and into trouble.  She had to ask aid of other fae that she encountered many times, and had little to offer in trade for those favors.  To make matters worse, while she knew to tell no one her true name, she did not know that she must avoid the faerie food.  In the end, she traded her name and one mortal day of service to the Queen per mortal year in exchange for being allowed to go back to her mother at all.  

It was not a pleasant bargain, for a mortal day can be a very long time in certain parts of Faerie, but worse have certainly been struck, and will be struck again.  

…

The second mortal was a clever lawyer who sought personal fame and an appointment as a judge, and fancied himself a scholar of Faerie lore.  He knew all the rules of the fae that mortals have ever recorded by heart, and was well-known for his skill at manipulating witnesses and jury alike in court.  Accordingly, he took all the proper precautions when he made his way to speak to the Queen: he secured his path through the Hedge with iron spikes so that he could come and go as he pleased, and carried his own food with him, as well as baubles and trinkets to trade for favors as he might need.  

His interview with the Queen was far longer than the first mortal’s, for he was terribly careful to make certain the terms of their bargain were as clear and watertight as they could possibly be.  The Queen was at first amused, then increasingly irritated - not at the time it took, for the great ones among the fae value few things more highly than a battle of wits, but because the lawyer was obviously very sure of his own cleverness, and thought he was getting the better of the Queen.  

The Queen is older than mortal memory, and has held her throne nearly as long.  Any stories of mortals outwitting  _her_  either come from cases where she took a liking to the mortal in question for some inscrutable reason and decided therefore to grant their wish, or are outright fabrications.  

He, too, was given a year and a day to make a map of Faerie and thus earn the Queen’s aid.  

His story is even longer than the girl’s, and rather tedious, for he engaged in such sparring with every fae he encountered.  He presented a map to the Queen in the end, but he had failed to account for the shifting nature of Faerie, and it fell far short of the mark.  Then, because he had most certainly  _not_  gotten the better of the Queen in the original bargaining, she turned him into a monkey and gave him to her current favorite among the courtiers, to keep as a pet.  

…

The third mortal was a woman in her middle years, and the sort of person one might well expect to go to the fae seeking worldly success - she lived a modestly comfortable life of many passions, and she had gained a large degree of proficiency in most of them.  She was the sort of person who perhaps _should_  have found some sort of extraordinary success by that point in her life, but whose luck (and perhaps her rather sharp-edged personality, which did not match what most expected of a woman) had kept her in obscurity.  

Like the lawyer, she knew many tales of Faerie (though she had studied them with wonder and enjoyment rather than exhaustive attention to detail), and took items with her to aid in her quest, though out of courtesy she used no iron to mark the Hedge, and was careful to avoid having even a speck of it on her person.  Instead, she wore jewelry of silver and river stones and sea glass, and a mechanical watch of brass, all made by her own hands.  

The Queen was not warm when she greeted her (for that is not the Queen’s way), but it seemed there was perhaps a hint of approval in her regal gaze.  “And what is it you have journeyed to my Court to seek, mortal?”  

The woman bowed low and smiled a rare, careful smile.  “Your Majesty, my world has its wonders, but I do not quite fit in it.  I have come in hopes of joining the ranks of your courtiers, as one of your number.”  

It was not a common thing for the Queen to show surprise, but she did it then, raising delicately upswept eyebrows high.  “An odd request.  I have had many mortals come asking to serve me, or love me, and they are seldom pleased with the outcome, however, so perhaps it is a wise one.  Bring me a map of my realm that I judge worthy within a year and a day, and we will see how wise it is.  Fail, and return to your ill-fitting world less ten years of your lifetime.”  

“As you say, your Majesty,” the woman agreed simply, and set out to complete the task.  

The fae love things that are unique and precious, and doubly so such things that come from the honest labor of a single pair of hands.  The trinkets she carried bought many good pieces of information and aid, for she spent them wisely.  At other times she solved riddles (simple enough for her, for she was well-read and knew far more legend-lore than those of the fae), or traded answers for answers. 

When she came off the worse in a minor bargain, she never complained, for the fae are fair in their own way, if not by mortal standards.  

Her first successful bargain bought her the names and realms of all the Queen’s direct vassals, which she used to guide the rest of her search.  Most who seek aid in Faerie either do not know much of science and data analysis, or do not think such things can apply in a magical realm, but the woman was determined and methodical.  She knew that time slips and slides and bits of the realm reorder themselves, so she used favors in each realm with minor fae to record the way things changed so that she might deduce their patterns.  She knew that it was all too easy to misattribute the reasons for certain observations, so she was careful to collect as many types of information in each place as possible - the phase of the moon and whether it showed, the weather, the title of the ruling noble…. All of these things, she recorded without allowing herself to theorize, for many months.  

When the year neared its end, she returned to her home and spent the final month sifting through everything she had learned, and meticulously arranging it all into a map that documented even the ways that Faerie most often re-formed itself.  

She returned to the Queen on the final day, and unrolled an enormous piece of paper where her final map - better called an atlas, perhaps, though she knew better than to do so out loud - was carefully hand-drawn in ink, as the Queen looked on curiously.  

“Your Majesty, you know better than any how your realm shifts and changes, but I have recorded the most influential patterns here, as well as the overall shape of things.”  

“How did you come by the information that gave you these patterns?” the Queen asked, her expression intent but devoid of any other indication as to its accuracy. 

“I spoke to each of your vassals and learned what I could about their individual realms from both them and their subjects.  I suspected that each region would have its own personality, and it seems that was true.”  She swallowed, forcing herself not to chew her lip in nervousness, now that the final judgment was about to come.  

The Queen was silent for what seemed like an hour, and perhaps it even was.  The woman had experienced so many shifts in subjective time over the course of her year of study that she found it difficult to tell, and she had traded away her mechanical watch long ago.  

Finally, a slow smile - dangerous, but obviously pleased - spread across her uncannily beautiful face.  

“There are a few mistakes here.”  She pointed them out, and the woman steeled herself for rejection.  Then - “We should discuss them at more length, however, and I will listen to all of the things my vassals told you that gave you your conclusions, hmm?  In the meantime, my strange mortal, you need a use-name, if you are to be a member of my Court.”  

There are other stories of Lady Jack-’o-Trades, Royal Cartographer and Mistress of Spies, and others still of Lady Jack-’o-Trades, Consort to the Queen of Faerie.  

But this is the first of all of them.  


End file.
